Varadero on the Beach
Varadero has definitely awoken to tourism in no uncertain terms with hotels everywhere and outside of the main city centre huge hotels sit across the landscape. As you stroll through town, tourists mingle and different languages pass your ears one by one, with British, Italian and Spanish tourists making up a majority of the numbers.
Many of these hotels are all inclusive and should you decide to want rock up and find accommodation once you have arrived then do not expect to find cheap pension houses as this is prohibited and the authorities threaten to take the local Cubans homes so they don’t bother.
It is easy enough to find a hotel for 25CUC a night and should you wish you can also take the all inclusive deals and sit on the beach or by the pool (depending on which hotel you stay at) and drink most of the day and have all you can eat.
Unesco World Heritage are protecting several of the buildings and at present you will still see some that are in desperate in need of repair even protected buildings need repair and maybe Unesco World Heritage need to revisit this, so get the photos while you can.
I wandered up and down the vast beach and was pleased to see how clean it was with very little debris to be seen; the odd Cristal beer can I think in this day and age is good compared to some beaches around the world today with polluted and often littered strewn beaches.
There are plenty of water sports to do and there is also the National Reserve which is only for tourists, I hope that the Cubans were able to see it before as this would be shame otherwise but Varadero is much the same as Cayo Coco and is now aimed primarily at tourism.
To get to Varadero it is only a 2 hour drive from Havana and there other places close by and within a day excursion and return to Varadero should you wish to, but remember that it is set-up for beach holidays in the first instance.
Jay
